I always find my head swimming with unwelcome depressive
thoughts. Like little fishes, they hide amidst anemone until they think I’m
gone, having drifted away into the ocean of sleep.
But here they are, more punctual than a newly tuned clock.
They crawl back, shadows in a world that has had the lights turned out again.
The light does keep them away for a while, yes, but never are they truly gone.
Fear is an ever-present entity, and with anxiety and panic, it forms the holy trinity.
I’ve never known why they come. I haven't got the answers, nor
have I figured out how to get them to leave. When did I give permission to
enter my house? When did my mind lower its guard just enough to let them pass,
and what did the rest of my body do to stop them? Nothing, I’m afraid. They don’t
have the answers either. If this is a class or a test, I’m surely failing.
How is everything so loud when silence is all around me?
Where does the noise come from if nothing is making the sound? How am I to cover
to my ears when the scream comes from beneath them, beneath bone and skull and
brain? Oddest yet, I have no idea what the screams are saying. It is just
noise.
Sleep—why are you running away from? Why do you play this
game of tag with me? I don’t want to play, but I still find I’m “it” every
time. Please let me forfeit. Please let me rest.
Unrest has been planting seeds in my head. I am left to weed
while I should be sleeping. Just like farmers get up at 5 AM to plow the
fields, I too am up at dawn, reaping what unrest has sown, only I don’t want
what’s produced. Rotten thoughts and poisonous roots will kill anything that’s still
holding on.
I feel at this very moment, that if someone were to press me
into a ball and compress me, harder and harder, I could turn into a diamond. My
heart and head have gotten a head start—they feel like rocks inside me. Maybe if
my body turned into a diamond, I would be worth something.
It’s been hard to keep the faith that there isn’t something
wrong with me. Normally, your head and heart work against each other in matters
of life, but they have teamed up on me and now they say the same things. They
both whisper about me and have inside jokes. My heart tells my head what I have
given up and my head laughs that I was so stupid to give pieces of myself away.
They both think I’m stupid, that I am hopeless. I doubt my kidneys or spleen
will suddenly back me up in this war. All my other senses fail me too, and I am
left unprotected, standing in the middle of the battlefield—armor-less and
exposed.
You are not truly alone until your body has abandoned you.
